cyber security: In the season of breaches, Indian conglomerates bolster cyber walls

MUMBAI: Indian conglomerates are strengthening their cybersecurity policies, organising training workshops and awareness camps as they wake up to the threat posed by cyber attacks that can disrupt business operations, cause loss of confidential information and damage reputation.

Tata Group organised a conference for group chief information officers recently to discuss ways to thwart cyber attacks. It hired Gartner to help the group company CIOs identify current state of cyber security, a desired future state, gaps, and action plans.

The discussions at the CIO forum highlighted a debate of preventing vs. detect for effective cyber security while both IT and Operational Technology were discussed in adequate depth, the company said. “External specialists showcased a range of technologies, while the CIOs themselves shared their best practices. The options and challenges for cybersecurity insurance were also discussed,” said Gopichand Katragadda, Group CTO, Tata Sons. “New and future technologies, such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing, were discussed as they applied to encryption, decryption, and learning normal vs. abnormal operational behaviour.”

Mahindra Group has also stepped up efforts to strengthen security infrastructure and awareness around these attacks. Everyday thousands and thousands of mails hit Mahindra & Mahindra’s server, out of which nearly 66% are getting quarantined, according to the company. “There are many such known and unknown attacks happening every day, every instant around the globe and each organisation needs to take preventive measure against it. The cyber attacks are no longer a matter of ‘if ’ but ‘when’,” said a Mahindra spokesperson. “Creating awareness among users is one more aspect that every organisation needs to take care of.”

The Group has started supportive initiatives like security mailers, communication awareness, periodic training, QS-27001certifications that has helped it to be safe and secured. “All big conglomerates are creating blanket cybersecurity policies — applicable to its businesses irrespective of their size or sector. The policy deals with network security, device security, cloud security, data centre security and so on. Their business units will adopt to those guidelines,” said Rajpreet Kaur, senior research analyst for infrastructure protection at Gartner.

The heightened focus on cyber crime comes at a time when Indian businesses were targetted recently by ‘ransonware’ cyber attacks such as Petya and WannaCry where the cyber criminals demanded money to restore files.

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